This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Multitasking homeowners demand more of their space

Washing clothes in the bedroom. Sending email from the laundry room.

Acoffee table with a lift top is designed to accommodate working at a computer or eating. The piece manufactured by Universal Furniture is part of a growing line of products designed to help homeowners perform multiple tasks in their living or family rooms (AP/Courtesy Universal Furniture)

Interiour designer Wendy Danziger provided a sleep sofa, built-ins with storage and table to help overnight guests settle in at this TV room that doubles as a gest bedroom. She also used a pocket door to save space and provide privacy. (J.W. Smith Photography / AP/Courtesy Danziger Design)

The center door on the cabinet pulls down to create a desk surface and reveals three hidden shelves in this murphy desk by Twin Star International. Furniture manufacturers are increasingly creating dual-purpose furniture like the murphy desk that allows homeowners to use rooms in their homes for more than one function. (Courtesy Twin Star International / AP)

By MELISSA KOSSLER DUTTONAssociated Press

Fri., Aug. 30, 2013

Washing clothes in the bedroom. Sending email from the laundry room.

Busy families are demanding more from each room in the house, and spaces designed for multiple functions are popping up all over floor plans, design blogs and magazine spreads.

“People multitask all the time. There is a definite correlation and carry-over in the home,” said Wendy Danziger, owner of Danziger Design in Bethesda, Md. She has helped clients create rooms for eating and watching television; housing guests and working from home; sleeping and doing laundry.

Some homebuilders have added space for seating, desks and charging stations in the laundry room.

“It’s happening all over,” Danziger said. “There’s a lot of strategy that goes on — a lot of compromise.”

Article Continued Below

Furniture manufacturers, too, are helping to make every square inch count, said Pat Bowling, spokeswoman for the American Home Furnishings Alliance in High Point, N.C. Modern pieces include end tables that double as file cabinets, coffee tables with adjustable heights to accommodate working at a computer or eating, and chests with docking stations for electronics.

The portability of laptops, tablets and other devices means you don’t need a dedicated home office to work at home. People can — and do — use electronics in the family room, bedroom and kitchen.

“Today’s furniture is multi-tasking furniture that can help you stay organized, stay connected and keep clutter at bay,” said Kim Shaver of Hooker Furniture in Martinsville, Va. “In versatile styles and silhouettes, these pieces fit any room — from the kitchen to the bedroom and from the family room to the entry hall or foyer — and provide multiple functions in each room.”

Danziger says a console table with hinged leaves is a good option for a TV room that sometimes needs to become a dining room: When guests come for dinner, just slide the table away from the wall under the television and extend the leaves to create a table that seats up to six people.

Nesting tables — stacking tables of different sizes — also help increase the functionality of a space, she said. She often puts them on wheels so they can easily be rolled to another area of the room for another use.

She has worked with retirees downsizing to a smaller home and with young professionals squeezed into urban apartments.

“Once home offices were the rage,” she said. Now, “it is not unusual to see living spaces where people eat, sleep, work and play games just for the sake of living in a city where one can walk to everything, including their office.”

Frank Pitman of Frank Pitman Designs in Orange County, Calif., also has seen the trend. “There’s a lot of dual-purpose space happening,” he said.

He has had a growing number of clients putting laundry facilities in their bedroom closets. “They are already storing the clothing there. Why not wash the clothing right there?” he said.

Some of his clients like having a room’s secondary use come as a surprise: Television or computer screens that seem to “appear from nowhere” are good examples, he said.

Murphy beds, which are stored vertically in a cabinet along a wall, or murphy desks, which slide out bookshelves, are another way to keep a space’s other function hidden.

Often the need to get more use out of a space arises when an elderly parent joins the household, a grown child returns home or a young family hires a live-in nanny, said Amy Albert, editor of Custom Home Magazine in Washington, D.C.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com